


To Protect is to Destroy

by blcwriter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Gif-fic, Stilinski Family Feels, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr-fic inspired by a gifset going around about the Sheriff losing his badge and the FEELS between him and Stiles.  Originally posted (with inspiring gif and source) at <a href="http://lettersfromeleanorrigby.tumblr.com/post/51416023840/to-protect-is-to-destroy-trigger-warnings-he">my tumblr.</a></p><p>
  <i>There’s nothing Stiles can do to fix this— not that look on his dad’s face, not that same look that’s been growing, all this time his dad won’t look him in the eye, and now this.  </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Protect is to Destroy

He watched his dad walk away, heading off into the house.

He didn’t know why he wasn’t angry at Stiles?

That wasn’t his fault.

There’s nothing Stiles can do to fix this— not that look on his dad’s face, not that same look that’s been growing, all this time his dad won’t look him in the eye, and now this. 

Stiles has watched his Dad— no— the Sheriff of Beacon County— testify in court often enough that he knows his tells. The lack of sustained eye contact, the squinting, the passive verbs, the impersonal nouns. The Sheriff’s telling a story he feels too strongly about, pissed off about, hurt by, hurt because he knows there’s not a damned thing he can do and it wounds more than his professional pride. Even when it’s not his fault, his Dad— the Sheriff’s— got a big heart, and Stiles— yeah, when hasn’t he always pushed it too hard?

Good intentions don’t matter. Other peoples’ secrets that aren’t his to tell— all so much bullshit. The fact still remains, at the end of the day, Stiles chose to lie to his Dad about shit that would put his father— the Sheriff— into conflict with the thing that kept him going and mattered the most in the world, the thing that had gotten him going again when Stiles couldn’t, when the empty house, Mom gone, Stiles not having any fucking idea where to start with— everything, really, because where the hell even was the fusebox, much less how to order more oil?— because work was important and Stiles knew that, had thought if he’d kept the werewolf bullshit on the DL, his Dad could still go to work and deal with. Ordinary human disasters. Stuff that wasn’t Stiles and his everyday freakshow. 

What was that thing about best-laid plans?

Indefinite suspension plus Jackson and Jackson’s father— that was a recipe for disaster, and in a place like Beacon Hills with a long freaking memory and an ability to hold epic grudges unless something new and shiny or horrid and tragic…

Well.

They’d feel sorry for his Dad, tragic figure, really, and Stiles would be out of his hair, not another thing he’d failed at, another reminder of something that wasn’t his fault because the Sheriff took on too much and it wasn’t his fault.

It was a good thing he’d ~~stolen from Deaton~~ stocked up on various monkshoods, after the whole thing at the clinic with Derek. 

He got in the Jeep, drove out to the Preserve, then pulled out the extra backpack of wolfy-ass-saving measures he’d stowed in the back seat. Not like he was going to need it, and it’d only raise questions. The tincture in its brown bottle smelled— purple, hah— like something Willy Wonka might make if he was a demented witch doctor. It tasted like ass, though— tingled, too, burned all the way going down, all of it completely disgusting, and he fought back a wave of— ugh. He should’ve been nicer to Derek when he’d been dying that time, if only that once. This shit was gross.

He shoved the backpack into an old tree. One of the pack would find it, no doubt, maybe Allison, even. She was sensible, maybe she’d be able to use it if she could ever talk some sense into her Dad.

He stumbled back to his Jeep, petting the dash in apology because God, his Mom had loved this fucking car, and managed to get it into gear and back out on the road before he started sweating, shaking, this was some serious shit but of course he had to make it look real and everyone knew the county coroner’s tox office was backed up like nobody’s business. 

They’d never screen for poison, and the tincture was probably at least half gin.

He gunned the engine, squinted as he tried to focus on a really big, big fucking tree, one that would make a good splatter-crash-crunch. Tried to aim, speed it up, because ugh, he couldn’t see straight, he was going to…

**Author's Note:**

> That’s it. I don’t know what happens after that.


End file.
